The Urban Coexistence: Planning Strategies for Public Spaces

Abstract

This article presents some discussion on the use and planning of public circulation areas in contemporary cities, depicting, more specifically, the case of the city of Recife. Through field observation and the study of existing legislation, the proposed discussions offers a summary aiming at helping planning and management of these areas in order to promote better environmental and urban quality. The relevance of urban axes become increasingly evident in the practice and expression of the collective lifestyle. Pleasant or not, these linear public areas become the main arena of social exchange in contemporary daily life. In this way, there was a quest in order to identify the elements related to urban planning capable of qualifying and stimulating the use of transport axes by the citizens. Concepts related to public urban areas and theoretical essays by Jacobs (2000), Bauman (2009) and Davis (2000), for example, helped in the conclusion of this analysis, whose content was also developed according to experience in transportation areas in the French cities of Paris and Nantes. Cities in which the strategic value of their urban axes have been managed amidst development which is feasible and socially fair.